The present disclosure generally relates to a manufacturing method and system for producing vehicles, and more particularly relates to an adaptive vehicle manufacturing system and method for reducing vibrations and/or improving interior sound performance of vehicles.
It is widely known that there can be significant variation between vehicles in the automotive manufacturing process. To some degree, such variation occurs in every component of an assembled vehicle, but some can have a greater impact than others. For vehicle noise and vibration performance, there can be a significant variation due to variability in the body structure in damping materials. For the body structure, there are various steps in the manufacturing process where critical components are assembled (e.g., components and sub-components delivered from suppliers, components and sub-components manufactured in-house and off-line, such as those from a weld line, etc.). Other critical areas of the manufacturing process where variations can have a significant impact include welding of the vehicle body and the painting of the welded vehicle body. Heretofore, quality control for these processes have been mainly controlled by visual inspection (i.e., there are limited automated checks).
In one conventional manufacturing process for vehicles, mass production variation can be roughly 10 dB for acoustic sensitivity in the mid-frequency range. This can result in undesirable vibrations and poor interior sound performance. While damping and mass application can reduce the effects of such acoustic sensitivity variation, there are limits and drawbacks associated with standard damping and mass application processes. For example, excess damping and mass application may be applied to vehicles in the manufacturing process to account for the worst case scenario where a particular vehicle is at an outer limit for acoustic sensitivity variation. In other words, a standard damping and mass application process is designed for vehicle bodies at the limits of an acoustic sensitivity variation tolerance and damping/mass application to vehicles that are not at the limits of such tolerance typically would result in excess damping and mass application. Additionally, application of standardized damping and mass application processes typically only reduces vibrations and improves interior sound performance to a limited degree.